Name

The display name of a type definition, a scenario, a multiplayer map, or a musical score.

Type display name

Specification — Type display name

Applies to: AbstractType and derived types
AITriggerTypeAircraftTypeAnimTypeBuildingTypeBulletTypeCampaignHouseTypeInfantryTypeIsometricTileTypeOverlayTypeParticleSystemTypeParticleTypeScriptTypeSideSmudgeTypeSuperWeaponTypeTagTypeTaskForceTeamTypeTerrainTypeTiberiumTriggerTypeUnitTypeVoxelAnimTypeWarheadTypeWeaponType
File: rules.ini
Section: [<ObjectType ID>]
Value: string
When omitted: ComputedThe section name, copied into the display name as the type is created.

Every registered type carries two names: the section it is declared under, which is what everything else in the rules refers to it by, and this one, which is what a person is shown. The value is held in a 49-byte field, so it is cut off after 48 characters, and it is displayed literally rather than being looked up as a translatable label.

[GAPOWR]
Name=GDI Power Plant

It reaches the screen wherever an object or a choice has to be identified: the sidebar’s build label and price line, the name shown for the object under the cursor, and the country box in the skirmish and multiplayer setup screens. A country’s display name is also matched, alongside its section name, whenever a house is looked up by name — so a house list that names Civilian finds the country declared as [Neutral].

There is no way to clear a display name back to nothing. An assignment with no value at all is discarded while the file is being read, so Name= on its own leaves whatever was already stored in place.

Scenario title

Specification — Scenario title

Applies to: scenarios
File: map file
Section: [Basic]
Value: string
When omitted: <none>The read substitutes the literal text "<none>" rather than keeping the title the previous mission established.

[Basic]
Name=GDI 10A: Destroy the Prototype Facility (A)

The title is held in a 44-byte field, so it is cut off after 43 characters. Within the running game it is read in one place: it fills in the description offered when the player saves from the in-game options screen, so the save appears under the mission’s own name.

In a campaign the map does not have the last word. Once the map has been read, the mission text file belonging to the expansion in force is opened and searched for a section named exactly as the scenario file was named when the mission was started. A Name= there replaces the map’s. The shipped campaigns do not reach it: their scenarios are named by path, such as Maps/Missions/GDI1A.MAP, while the shipped mission file’s sections are bare filenames such as [GDI1A.MAP], so the map’s own title stands.

Multiplayer map title

Specification — Multiplayer map title

Applies to: multiplayer maps
File: map file (.mpr)
Section: [Basic]
Value: string
When omitted: No Name

Parse behavior

the same [Basic] display name, read again when the multiplayer map list is built

Loose .mpr files sitting in the game directory are scanned whenever the multiplayer map list is rebuilt, and each file’s title becomes the row it occupies in that list, unless the same file also carries a [Multiplay] Description, which replaces it. The title travels with the map: the host sends it to the guests with the rest of the game options, so every player sees the same text beside the map preview.

At most 43 characters survive into the list, whatever the file holds.

Maps packaged inside a .pkt list are titled from the packet entry instead and never consult this setting.

Score display name

Specification — Score display name

Applies to: Themes
File: THEME.INI + THEME01.INI
Section: [<Theme ID>]
Value: string
When omitted: (empty)An empty name, which leaves the score's row in the track list blank.

The value is displayed literally rather than being looked up as a translatable label, and it is held in a 64-byte field, so it is cut off after 63 characters. A player sees it in the sound options track list, where each score the playlist would accept is listed by this name with its Length beside it.

[DUSKHOUR]
Name=Dusk Hour
Length=4.11
Scenario=1
Side=GDI

The section name is the audio file’s own name and is what the rest of the engine identifies a score by, but this name is a lookup key as well. Turning a name into a score matches section names first, without regard to letter case, and then falls back to a case-sensitive substring search over the display names. Every request for a score by name runs through that routine — the menu, map selection and score-screen music, a scenario’s Theme=, and the reader that builds the score list itself — so a display name containing another score’s section name answers to that section name, and a [Themes] entry whose ID appears inside an existing display name amends that score instead of adding one of its own.

See also — Multiplay, SidebarCameoText, Official, RequiredAddOn, Length, Normal